by Lisa Edmonds
“We can talk about that later,” I said, frowning at him. Natalie, who could only hear my side of the conversation, looked puzzled. “He’s asking about you.”
“Oh, he hasn’t been here all along?” Natalie asked.
“Well, he was, but not in a form where he could listen.”
“Damn right I wasn’t,” Malcolm griped.
I glared. “Well, that’s gratitude.”
He looked abashed. “Sorry. I know you’re doing your best for me, but….”
“I know it was rough,” I said. “If there is any other way to hide you, I’ll try to think of options.”
“Why does he have to hide?” Natalie asked.
I debated how much to tell her and decided on a portion of the truth. “He’s in hiding from someone who wants him for a reason we don’t understand. So if anybody ever asks you about Malcolm, you never saw him.”
“Saw who?” Natalie quipped.
“Exactly.”
Malcolm grinned. “I like her. She’s cool.”
“Settle down, Ghost of Don Juan.” I lowered myself to the floor and folded my legs with practiced ease. I placed my hands on my knees and began to breathe deeply and evenly, closing off outside distractions as I sought the calm, centered core of myself that would help me focus on the serious business of unraveling someone else’s wards.
For whatever reason, that calm center was difficult to find. I supposed it had something to do with the surprise arrival of a mage’s ghost, a narrow escape from SPEMA agents, and a new client with a loud-mouthed bigot of an aunt and a mysterious magical grandmother with near-deadly wards.
It took several minutes, but I was finally able to relax. I meditated until I felt sure I was prepared to do the dangerous work ahead of us, and then I opened my eyes.
Natalie was curled up on her grandmother’s bed. At first I thought she was asleep, but her eyes were open and she seemed to be looking through the open door into the library. I might have been imagining it, but I thought she seemed to have a bit more color in her face and sparkle in her eyes than earlier in the day.
Malcolm was still examining the wards, his fingers moving as he formulated a strategy for unraveling them.
“What was your grandmother’s name?” I asked, my voice breaking the silence of the room.
Natalie jumped. “Morrison. Betty Morrison.”
The name didn’t ring any bells. I got up and stretched. Natalie rose as well. “You should probably go into the other part of the house, just in case.”
She looked disappointed. “I was hoping to watch you work. Will it really be dangerous?”
I considered. “Probably not for you, since the wards were tuned to let you in and out, but everything we’re going to be doing will be invisible to you since you aren’t a mage. If you want to stay in the room with us, I’d be more comfortable if you would at least sit over there to the side, away from the wards.”
“Okay.” Natalie moved to the far side of the room and sat.
Malcolm hovered next to me. When I slipped into my second sight, I saw the complex runes connected by threads that pulsed like power lines. The wards formed a perimeter around the library at floor level, with additional reinforcement around the doorway. The wards were orange and white, the signature colors of fire and air magic.
Faint black threads were the last remaining evidence of how deadly the wards had once been. It wasn’t hard to imagine that anyone running into them when they were at full strength might have been reduced to a smoking ruin. Betty Morrison had been playing hardball. I rubbed my chest.
“How do you want to do this?” Malcolm asked.
I contemplated the wards and the threads connecting them. “Could you break it?”
He tilted his head, considering. “Maybe, but honestly, I’m not comfortable doing that. It looks like there is a lot of energy still stored up in there. There’s no telling what it will do if we break the ward, since the person who set it isn’t here anymore to control the flare. We might level the house, or take out the entire neighborhood. If we cast a circle strong enough to contain the surge of energy, we’d have to tap a ley line to hold it, and that would attract a lot of attention we definitely don’t need.”
I sighed. “That was my assessment too. An unweaving would probably work best. That’s gonna take a while.” I rolled my neck and shoulders to loosen myself up. “Give me a minute to get focused, then find me.”
I closed my eyes and opened the tiniest chink in my shields. The wards buzzed on the edge of my senses like a hive of bees. Slowly, I reached out with my magic to feel the threads of Betty’s wards.
The fabric of the wards pulsed in a tapestry of runes and power. I observed the threads, feeling my way through them to understand the patterns. I sifted through the wards like fingers moving through the finest beach sand. The wards were works of art, and I regretted having to destroy them.
As my shields lowered, I could sense Malcolm’s magic. It was lovely, colorful and light, with none of the darkness mine held. His magic was like a symphony playing Beethoven. By comparison, mine sounded like a bunch of xylophones falling down the stairs. With a jolt, I realized I was actually jealous of a ghost.
As quickly as the feeling flared, I squashed it. Now was not the time. Even faded by time and lack of maintenance, Betty’s wards could be dangerous, even deadly if we lost control over them during the unweaving. I had to stay focused. Everything else would have to wait.
Slowly, painstakingly, I slowed the sifting of the sand until I could feel individual grains. Vaguely, I was aware of Malcolm following my lead. I focused my senses on a single mote of power. Using my own magic, I slipped inside it and pulled gently, and it fell apart with a tiny pulse of energy and a sound like a distant chime. Somewhere near and yet in another universe, I heard and felt another chime as Malcolm took apart a different thread. It tugged on my awareness, like someone gently pulling at a single hair and then letting go.
Two grains of sand gone from the beach. I focused on my task while somewhere on the edge of my awareness, Malcolm did the same. The wards began to fall.
Chapter 5
Hours later, I hugged the toilet in the master bathroom and heaved miserably. My stomach felt like it was full of razors, and I tasted blood. I was aware Malcolm was hovering nearby while Natalie stood outside the bathroom door, but I didn’t care much about either of those things.
The moment the last thread of Betty’s wards disintegrated, agony and nausea ripped through me, sending me fleeing on rubbery legs toward the nearest bathroom, half-blind with pain. I barely had time to slam the door closed and fall on my knees in front of the toilet before I threw up everything I’d eaten today, and then it felt like I threw up everything I’d eaten in the last week. The spasms that racked my body were so violent, I was surprised my shoes didn’t come up too.
“Alice, what should I do?” Malcolm’s hands felt ice-cold on my shoulders.
Blinded by pain and sickness, I flailed at him. “Get away!” Another spasm tore at me. This time, I threw up mostly blood. Dimly, I thought, Shit…that cannot be good.
Through the haze, the rational part of my mind figured out that I had triggered a curse hidden within the wards designed to punish anyone who tried to disassemble the library’s protections. Curses and spells concealed within other spells, commonly known as landmines, were one of the most dangerous hazards mages faced when interacting with unknown spellwork, since they were virtually undetectable until tripped.
This landmine didn’t seem to have affected Malcolm; it was possible it simply did not include noncorporeal beings as targets. I couldn’t really think about it very much right now. The pain was endless.
I heard Natalie through the door, asking if she should call for an ambulance.
“No,” I rasped. “No,” I said again, louder, so she could hear me. I convulsed and vomited blood so violently that it splattered across the toilet and floor. I spat several times and wiped my mouth with the back of my h
and. “No ambulance. I will…be…okay,” I managed to say. I hoped she heard me.
A minute passed, and though I dry-heaved and spat up more blood, the worst of the vomiting seemed to have passed. The pain was lessening by degrees. I flushed the toilet again and lay down on the cold tile of the bathroom, shivering with shock. My vision had gone gray, and vertigo made the bathroom spin around me.
The bathroom door swung open. “Oh my God,” Natalie said, horrified. After a moment, I heard soft noises and water running, and then a cool, wet washcloth began cleaning my face.
I had no strength or will to move, so I let her clean me up a little while sensation crept back into my limbs. I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until water trickled over one eyelid. I opened my eyes and was somewhat surprised I could see again.
Natalie appeared, a bloody washcloth in her hand, her eyes wild with fear. “Can you hear me?”
I took a ragged breath and whispered, “Yes.”
“What happened?” Natalie wiped my face gently with a different, cleaner washcloth. “I don’t know what to do to help you.”
“You…don’t have to do…anything,” I said, my voice gaining some strength. “I will be okay.”
She looked incredulous. “There is blood everywhere.” I thought she might be on the verge of losing it completely.
I tried to move but stopped when it felt like broken glass ripped through my stomach. I moaned and curled up in a ball. “Don’t call anyone,” I whispered. “I just…need to rest.” Then I let go and passed out.
*
The next time I opened my eyes, the pain in my stomach had faded to a dull ache. For a moment, I was disoriented and confused, my mind a jumble of fractured memories and pain. I remembered lying on the cold tile in the bathroom, but what was under me felt warm and soft.
When the fog cleared a bit, I realized I was on the floor in Betty’s bedroom, wrapped in a thick cocoon of heavy blankets and quilts. I turned my head and saw Natalie sitting on a pillow next to me, her back against the bed. She was focused on her phone, tapping on the screen and frowning.
I felt a jolt of fear. “Who are you calling?”
She jumped and dropped her phone with a clatter. “Nobody!” she said, sounding defensive, scared, and angry all at once. “I was reading what to do for someone in shock that didn’t involve calling 9-1-1.” She stared at me pointedly.
I closed my eyes. “Okay.” I cleared my throat gently. It was still raw and painful from vomiting. The gross taste in my mouth defied description. “Okay,” I repeated, opening my eyes again to look at her. “I just…can’t go to a hospital.” They’d run tests, call SPEMA—or, if I was really unlucky, my grandfather—and I’d disappear.
Natalie picked up her phone and put it on the bed behind her. I noticed she was even paler than before. My condition must have really frightened her. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she said. “I didn’t know how long you’d be out. You were shivering so badly, I got every blanket in the house and wrapped you up in them.” She gestured at my blanket nest.
“Thank you.” I felt weak but clearheaded, which was good. I’d half expected to wake up dead. “I’m sorry about the mess in your bathroom. When I can get up and around, I’ll clean it up.” The way my arms and legs felt, it might be a little while before I was mobile, though.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s clean.”
I sighed. “Oh. I am so—”
“I didn’t do it,” Natalie interrupted me. “The ghost did.”
Welp, I was completely awake now. “Malcolm?”
She nodded.
I looked around the room and saw my ghost hovering near the door to the library—a doorway no longer blocked by wards. He looked like he’d expended a lot of energy. “Did you use magic to clean the bathroom?”
Malcolm shrugged. “I had to. I didn’t know when you were going to wake up, and all that blood….” He shook his head.
“Thank you.” My blood could never be left behind. It could be used against me and was one of the few things that could connect my current life as Alice Worth to my real identity. Despite my order to not call an ambulance, Natalie might have done just that if my condition hadn’t improved, and Malcolm had done his best to protect me.
The windows were dark, and it occurred to me that I had no sense of how much time had passed. “What time is it?”
“About eleven o’clock,” Natalie told me. “You’ve been unconscious for almost three hours.”
Whoa. So the unweaving of the wards had taken something like four hours, then I’d been knocked out by what I was now sure were the remains of a landmine, no doubt put in place by Betty and designed to bring an abrupt and agonizing end to the life of anyone brave or foolish enough to try and dismantle her wards. My admiration of Betty’s skill rose another couple of notches, along with some other less pleasant emotions arising from the fact I’d been hurt twice in one day since coming into contact with the dead woman’s magic.
I started to wonder if all the cutesy cat crap in the house was camouflage. Who was Natalie’s grandmother? Why would she put black wards around her library, then double down by hiding a death curse within them? And what the hell was in that library?
I tested my arms and legs and found that strength was creeping back into them. I started peeling back layers of quilts and realized I was in my bra and underwear. “Where are my clothes?”
“Soaking in cold water,” Natalie said. “They were really bloody. I’ll get you something to wear.”
“How did I get into the bedroom?”
“I rolled you onto a blanket, then slid you across the floor into the bedroom. I wish I could have put you in bed, but I couldn’t pick you up.”
“Thank you for what you did,” I told her sincerely. I realized Natalie was sweating and looking a little unfocused. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel very good.” She shivered hard.
“Alice—” Malcolm began, his voice urgent.
Natalie gasped and white magic flared around her hands for a split second before it vanished. She sagged back against the bed, her eyes wide with panic.
“She’s a mage!” I shouted at Malcolm as I kicked frantically to get myself loose from the blankets that were tangled around my legs. “Malcolm, knock her out and drain her! Right now!”
Malcolm got to Natalie just as she shrieked and an orange fireball erupted from her hands. I dove to one side to avoid it and heat rolled over me.
Natalie’s cry cut off abruptly. When I looked back, she was on the floor, unconscious, and Malcolm’s hands were on her shoulders, draining her magic as fast as he could pull it. He began to glow.
I finally freed myself from the blankets and staggered to my feet, dizzy and achy. I was cold but didn’t have time to worry about trying to find clothes. “Do we need a circle?”
“I don’t think so,” Malcolm said tersely. “I’m almost done.”
“Did you hit her with a sleep spell?”
“Yes.” Malcolm drifted back from Natalie’s body. He was so bright from the surge of energy, I had to squint a bit. “She’s drained for now, but we need to bind her magic. A blood magic spell would be stronger than my earth or water magic.”
“I’m low on magical energy right now, but I think I have enough to bind her.” I knelt beside Natalie and used a hidden edge in my ring to open my right index finger, then pulled down the back of her shirt to expose her right shoulder blade. I drew a rune on her back in my blood and used most of my remaining energy to bind her magic. My blood hummed with power, then the mark faded.
I used the bed to push myself to my feet, and Malcolm and I looked down at Natalie as she slept.
“It looks like Granny Betty isn’t the only person in the family with a secret,” I said.
“Do you think she knows anything about her magic?”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe she knows. I’m thinking Betty found a way to hide Natalie’s magical ability from everyone, includ
ing Natalie.”
“Why would Betty not want Natalie to know about her own powers?”
I shrugged. “Could be lots of reasons. Betty hid her abilities well, probably to stay off the Agency’s registry. Maybe Betty was worried Natalie would screw up and out the whole family so she cast a suppression spell—more likely a shitload of layered spells—to bury Natalie’s abilities so deep that even Natalie doesn’t know she has them. Then Betty died without releasing the spell or telling Natalie the truth.”
I had a new emotion to add to my complicated feelings toward Betty: disgust. What did she think would happen if Natalie’s magic escaped the binding spells?
Malcolm moved over next to me. “Those would have to be some powerful spells. I mean, seriously powerful. And why are some of those powers breaking out now?”
“It might have something to do with the fact Betty’s wards are fading and we just finished unweaving the wards on the library. There was a lot of power in those wards.” I pressed my hands to my aching stomach. “Maybe some of that power was anchoring the binding spells on Natalie. We disrupted them, and now the cat’s out of the bag.” I glanced around at all the cat décor. “So to speak.”
Betty’s magic had been impressive, and she’d been an expert at wielding it, as the library wards and the pain in my chest and stomach could attest. How much power did Natalie have?
“We’ve stumbled into a mess here.” Malcolm gave voice to the thoughts in my head. “What are we going to do?”
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “We have a couple of choices.” I was startled to notice how easily I’d started using the pronoun we. “Worst-case scenario, unweaving the wards started a process and Natalie’s powers will manifest in full, like a dam breaking.”
“That could be bad.”
I snorted. “Yeah. If she’s got as much power as Betty did, and it flares, she could level the house, or worse. She’ll have no control, no discipline, no training. SPEMA will put her down. The only question is how much destruction she’ll cause before they nuke her, and how much collateral damage there will be when they do.”